Peter Carter is ranked as a leading criminal silk by Chambers Guide to the Legal Profession, which has commented "he is at the top of many solicitors' lists." He undertakes all types of criminal law work for defence and prosecution, but with the principal emphasis upon fraud, terrorism, homicide and trafficking.
 
He has appeared in many of the major terrorist trials in the last five years. He created the Protocol for Special Counsel in PII cases (following the House of Lords’ decision in R v H & C) when he was appointed by the Attorney-General in the case of Bourgass and others at the Central Criminal Court. His work defending in terrorism cases has led in turn to him lecturing recruits to the Counter-Terrorism Command on the law relating to interviews of suspects and on the human rights issues engaged in the investigation and prosecution of terrorism cases.
 
In fraud trials he has represented accused individuals and companies. He has also advised individuals and companies caught up in fraud investigations as potential defendants, as targets of search and seizure (especially when there is material that is confidential or subject to privilege) or as potential witnesses. On occasions he has been instructed by the Serious Fraud Office, most recently in connection with an investigation into overseas corruption. He has prosecuted fraud cases for the Revenue and Customs. He acted for one of the pharmaceutical companies prosecuted by the SFO for allegations of cartel activity (Operation Holbein) that ended recently when the Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's decision to quash the indictment after an investigation lasting almost eight years.
 
He is expert in international human rights law. He appears pro bono in appeals to the Privy Council. He has appeared in domestic and regional human rights courts outside the UK and participated in amicus briefs in overseas jurisdictions. He was Chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee between January 2003 and December 2005. He was one of the team instructed on behalf of both Houses of Parliament to produce an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court in the Guantánamo Bay case of Rasul v Bush which successfully challenged the US government’s denial of constitutional and international human rights to the detainees.
 
He is an acknowledged expert in the questioning of expert witnesses. In his capacity as Vice-Chair and then Chair of the Advocacy and Continuing Education Department at Gray’s Inn he ran programmes teaching advocates how to use and question expert witnesses. This follows from a teaching programme he devised on behalf of Gray’s Inn (together with Peter Hodgkinson - the Director of the Centre for Capital Punishment Studies at the University of Westminster - and Drs Andrew John and Tim McInerney of the Institute of Psychiatry) to train advocates in the Caribbean who act in capital cases. It proved so valuable as a teaching exercise that it has been introduced into training English barristers at Gray’s Inn.

He has been appointed by the Attorney-General to the panel of Special Advocates and is available to act in that capacity on behalf of any party in cases involving disclosure of sensitive material
 
Speaking and Lecturing
 
He lectures to practitioners and other interested professionals on domestic criminal law and procedure, on international criminal law and on the role of international human rights law in domestic proceedings. In 2004 and 2005 he conducted seminars in Malawi and Kenya on behalf of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law with advocates and judges on the use of international and comparative law in capital cases.
 
He has directed seminars on serious sexual offences accredited by the CPS that have involved a combination of law, the treatment of vulnerable witnesses and practical advocacy exercises. He helped to organise and present the series of seminars held on the theme of the importance of international criminal law for English lawyers.
 
He has addressed the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Civil Rights group of the European Parliament, and given lectures at various universities and to NGOs.
 
Publications

Cases of Note

R v Arshad

Luton Crown Court November 09

He represented a mother convicted of manslaughter for the death of her infant child. It was one of the controversial Shaken Baby Syndrome cases. The circumstances were such that the trial judge, Saunders J., imposed a suspended sentence of imprisonment, pointing out that : "A merciful course is not the same as a lenient course. It is always the prerogative of any Judge to be merciful in the appropriate case."

 

R v D
Kingston Crown Court, August 2009
He represented a distinguished academic who was acquitted of an allegation of historic rape and sexual abuse.

R v Wilson & anor
Ipswich Crown Court June 2009
He represented one of two defendants in a substantial fraud case involving allegations of fraud on the NHS. The case involved expert evidence of accounting and mental health care. The case was stopped before the close of the prosecution case.

R v O'Neill & ors (also known as R v GG)

03.12.08

He acted for one of the defendant pharmaceutical companies in this case prosecuted by the SFO. It ended at the interlocutory stage when the Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's decision to quash the indictment. It was the largest prosecution so far undertaken. It gave rise to innovative systems for storing materials generated in the enquiry and for dealing with disclosure of such of that material as was released for digital disclosure. The case involved the relationship between the civil and criminal law of conspiracy to defraud, in particular the status of legitimate commercial practices in civil law that the criminal law would otherwise prohibit. In the course of the proceedings there was an interlocutory appeal up to the House of Lords. It was a case that required familiarity with a vast amount of material, a willingness to engage in novel methods of data management and recourse to esoteric areas of civil and criminal law. (See also the profile for Max Hill QC, who was Peter Carter's junior and took silk during the case.)

Category: Fraud; Appellate Work

R v O
02.09.08
Court of Appeal
He took on this appeal (assisted by Parosha Chandran, a junior who specialises in public law and human rights) and the Poppy Project (an NGO assisting victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation) on behalf of the appellant who was a young person sentenced to imprisonment. She was arrested trying to leave the UK. She was using false identity documents that inflated her age. She was escaping sexual exploitation for which she had been trafficked from Africa. This was the first appeal by a victim of human trafficking who had been prosecuted and convicted of an offence under the Identity Card Act. It highlighted general ignorance in the criminal justice system about how such victims should be treated. The case raised issues about the UK’s obligations to victims of human trafficking, together with international law principles on the status of international conventions and their application in domestic law. It required research into material in both international and domestic sources.
Category: Appellate work; human rights
 
R v Rehman, Ul Haq and ors
15.07.07
Court: Woolwich Crown Court
He represented Zia Ul Haq in this major terrorism case. The principal defendant was Dhiran Barot who pleaded guilty, admitting involvement in plots to murder in the USA and the UK. Following discussions with the prosecution, Zia Ul Haq pleaded guilty to a reduced charge. In order to achieve a proper basis of plea, the limited participation of the defendant he represented had to be demonstrated by reference to expert and other evidence. Significant aspects of the case required understanding and then explaining to the court detailed expert evidence about computer encryption, the significance of temporary internet files and the footprint left by use of external hardware. In addition, evidence from overseas security services had to be considered with a view to challenging its admissibility.
Category: Terrorism; expert evidence
 
R v Ibrahim and others
09.07.07
Court: Woolwich Crown Court
He acted for Omar, one of the principals convicted of involvement in the 21st July bomb plot on the London Underground. The prosecution case was that Omar’s home was the bomb factory. The case substantially turned on novel and highly technical expert evidence about the construction of the devices, their explosive potential and what conclusions could be drawn from this evidence. A defence expert was instructed to explore and – where appropriate – challenge the numerous prosecution experts spanning chemistry, kinetic physics and isotopic traces in tap water.
Other issues included the effect of hostile publicity on the fairness of the trial, and the admissibility of answers given in “safety interviews” (in the absence of a solicitor to represent the accused) – this was the first case to challenge such evidence and consider the effect of ECHR jurisprudence on such interviews in English law.
In his closing speech, he used a Powerpoint presentation – an innovation that (as a method of presentation) received the approval of the trial judge.
Category: Terrorism; expert evidence
 
R v Civil Aviation Authority & Sec of State for Defence ex p Islamic Human Rights Commission
23/08/06
[2006] EWHC 2465
Court: Administrative Court
At the time of the intervention by Israel in Lebanon, he represented this NGO in an application to prevent the USA using the UK as a staging post in supplying munitions (possibly cluster bombs) under cover of anonymous flights to Israel at a time when it was alleged that war crimes were occurring. It was a novel application raising issues of international law (the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute) and domestic law (the extra-territorial application of the Terrorism Act, the Human Rights Act and the International Criminal Court Act) to acts of alleged complicity by public bodies in the UK. It also involved questions of the standard of evidence required in judicial review proceedings when dealing with information from a conflict zone.
Category: Human rights; international law; public law
 
R v Bourgass & ors
Appeal reported [2006] EWCA Crim 3397)
2005
Court: Central Criminal Court
In this case, he was appointed by the Attorney-General to act as Special Counsel to represent all defendants in this terrorism case – the “ricin” case – on disclosure of PII material. This was one of the first such cases after the House of Lords decision in R v H & C.  He devised the Protocol for Special Counsel appointed in such cases. The Protocol was approved by the trial judge (Penry-Davey J) and the process received the endorsement of the Court of Appeal as a means of achieving a fair trial.
Category: Terrorism; PII
 
Winston Caesar v The State (Trinidad and Tobago)
11.03.05
IACHR Series C, No. 123
Court: Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
He acted for a defendant who had been ordered to be flogged with a cat o’ nine tails as part of his sentence imposed by a court in Trinidad. This was the first appeal in the Caribbean to raise this issue. It involved presenting comparative international and municipal law (from the ECtHR and from various African states) as well as expert psychiatric evidence. The Court had to determine the boundary between torture and cruel and inhuman treatment.
Category: Human rights; international law
 
Rasul v Bush
28.06.04
542 U.S. 466 (2004)
Court: Supreme Court of the United States
He was instructed together with Anthony Lester QC, David Pannick QC and Jeremy Carver of Clifford Chance to draft an amicus brief on behalf of members of both Houses of the UK Parliament. The case is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision which determined that the US government could not deprive detainees at Guantánamo Bay of their constitutional right to make habeas corpus applications to US courts. It involved a combination of US, comparative and international law, especially the obligation of states to comply with international human rights obligations in the face of the fight against terrorism.
Category: Human rights; international law
 
R v Day
16.04.03
[2003] EWCA Crim 1060
Court: Court of Appeal - Criminal Division
This was a reference by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in which he acted for the appellant. The basis of the appeal was a challenge to the conduct of senior and experienced trial counsel. Late discovery of material by the trial solicitor led to additional grounds of appeal in the course of the hearing and consequently to issues about the ambit of appeals on referral from the CCRC.
Category: Homicide & Corporate Manslaughter, Appellate Work
 
Ramdeen v The State (Trinidad and Tobago)
22.05.02
[2000] UKPC 10
Court: Privy Council
Acting in this case for the applicant, a woman who had been sentenced to death after conviction for murder of her two step-children, he invited the Privy Council to be the first supreme court in the world to change its own previous dismissal of an appeal in the light of fresh evidence. The Privy Council did not finally determine that issue – but did not exclude it as a possibility – and referred the matter back to the President for a decision using his powers under the constitution of Trinidad and Tobago. The President failed to make a decision and so a successful application was made to the High Court in Trinidad for commutation and re-sentence, a decision that was upheld in the Court of Appeal. The case involved an innovative approach to appellate jurisdiction and to the application of constitutional remedies in Trinidad. He appeared with local counsel in both the High Court and Court of Appeal in Trinidad.
Category: Appellate Work; death penalty; human rights
 
R v Birks (Donnygate)
10.04.02
Court: Nottingham Crown Court
This case concerned local authority fraud and corruption in the allocation of planning permission. He acted for the chairman of the planning committee. The principal evidence came from expert planning witnesses who had to be cross-examined and the planning issues explained to the jury. It was a case that generated considerable hostile publicity, much of it political in nature as a result of the political complexion of the council concerned.
Category: Fraud & Financial Crime
 
Franco v The Queen
14.01.01
Times, October 11, 2001, [2001] UKPC 38
Court: Privy Council
This case, in which he acted for a defendant sentenced to death for murder, set the test for provocation (now to be superceded by proposed statutory changes to the law).
Category: Appellate Work